Day 105: Dark Halloween [JESSE 2.0]

NOTE: This blog was previously published under the [JESSE 2.0] blog at http://jessetwopointoh.blogspot.com but has been absorbed into Jesse's main blog for archival purposes. You can read all Jesse 2.0 entries here.

Tomorrow night is trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. But this year my house will be dark, for the first Halloween since I moved into this neighborhood with my family in 2006.

Halloween is the first in three late-year holidays that I will be spending without my wife, stepdaughter, or dog. Halloween is a somber holiday -- but it's hard to say if it's worse or better than other more intimate family holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas.

We used to start out the evening watching the "Garfield Halloween Special" on DVD during dinner, something that I, too, had done before trick-or-treating as a child. Then my wife would get her daughter dressed up in some crazy costume.

When I gave out candy the last four years I kind of did it for them, even if they were out trick-or-treating themselves. I did it to be part of the suburban community life that I always dreamed of.



But now that dream is gone. I am but a shell living alone in a large suburban dwelling. I just don't feel like giving out candy this year.

These holidays are going to be difficult, but they are something I'm going to have to get used to. I'm going to have to treat them like every day of the year, or at least relax and catch up on reading, like I would have done anyway.

Other than the upcoming Holidays, how am I doing these days? Better I guess, I am mostly able to go on about life, though they still crowd my mind during idle time and I still dream that they forgive me and take me back. I am still wrestling with the mortgage company on a loan modification. I am still going out with my "guy friends" at least once a week - no females are in the picture yet.

The divorce will be finalized on November 11th. It's not clear to me if I have to see her that day, or sign anything, or if the paperwork we already signed simply becomes official and I get a copy in the mail. I guess that will launch "Jesse 2.1"

Day 79: The Stones World Tour [JESSE 2.0]

NOTE: This blog was previously published under the [JESSE 2.0] blog at http://jessetwopointoh.blogspot.com but has been absorbed into Jesse's main blog for archival purposes. You can read all Jesse 2.0 entries here.

Yesterday another inconvenience of no longer having a family living with me came to the forefront - and it was something I never thought I'd face anytime soon.

I haven't been to the emergency room (or really, a hospital) since I was twelve years old (for me; I had visited my ex-wife there several times). But yesterday morning when I awoke at 4 AM I immediately knew something was "wrong" because the pain in my abdomen was unlike anything I had ever experienced before.

I thought at first it might be the stomach flu because of the nausea, but the pain extended from my abdomen backwards through my lower back - and the heating pad didn't help. Finally after writhing in pain for a couple hours in bed I dragged myself into the heavy rain and drove myself to the emergency room.

Thankfully everything went fairly quickly and they quickly put in an IV for fluids, anti-nausea and morphine. As I lapsed in and out of consciousness for the next couple of hours, they kept asking me for basic information that had to be in their system already, and finally got me in for a CAT scan. Half an hour later the doctor said that I have a kidney stone, which is too small to operate for and must come out "naturally" (read: painfully at some undisclosed time in the future).

After they wheeled me back from the CAT scan they forgot to take down the sides in the bed and (also because the IV was connected to the bed) I was momentarily trapped, feeling quite nauseous, with no convenient receptacle. Fortunately a nurse came in and gave me a bag specifically made for such situations.

A couple hours later I awoke to the doctor asked me if "someone was waiting for me." No, I said in a haze of morphine, not realizing what that really meant until afterward. There was no one that cared for me now, no one that would be in the waiting room, no one to drive me home. I was truly on my own.

They said I couldn't drive because of the morphine, which made sense to me, and offered to call a cab in the pouring rain, which I took to Wal-Mart and got prescriptions for Vicadent and anti-nausea medicine filled, stumbling around the store, soaked, with my hospital bracelet still on and gauze and a cotton ball around my elbow like some sort of homeless druggie.

Fortunately a former co-worker was there at the pharmacy and offered to drive me home so I wouldn't have to take another cab (something that, by the way, I had probably only done once before in my life).

The time between then and noon today I spent drifting in and out of consciousness in bed trying to deal with the pain. Today, thankfully, the pain has subsided but I still have that empty feeling that there was no one there to calm the pain, no one to help me stumble through that horrible day in the rain.